Average Sleeping Time

[katyresident]

Hey, can anyone find/share information on how much sleep people should get, depending on their age? Thanks.

[20thStDad]

I think it varies from person to person, not by age. I know people who get by on 4 a night and others who need 10. I think it has to do with diet and activity level as well.

[musicman]

i'm a 7-8 hr person, otherwise afternoons are sluggish.

just found this

[katyresident]

i'm a 7-8 hr person, otherwise afternoons are sluggish.

just found this

Interesting...so 7-8 hour sleeppers live longest?? Thanks for replying everyone.

[musicman]

Interesting...so 7-8 hour sleeppers live longest?? Thanks for replying everyone.

looks like in alameda cnty, they are less likely to die. there are definitely MANY factors involved.

[OkieEric]

looks like in alameda cnty, they are less likely to die. there are definitely MANY factors involved.

this would make for a good poll...i'm a 6-7 hour, personally. i envy those who can sleep 8 hours straight, b/c i honestly can't do it, not even back when I was an active kid. 7 is the goal during the week, though it can get as low as 4-5 - it's pretty much inversely proportional to alcohol consumption

i'm going to agree that it's largely on an individual basis. i know people who get by on very little, and i have from time to time gotten into that mode as well...i personally feel less tired during the day on 6 than on 8, if that makes sense

all this aside, i've read (and i think it's well known) that the older you get, the less sleep you need. i'm pretty sure my 82 year old grandmother gets about 4 hours a night. that could be completely wrong, but these ideas about sleep seem to change every few years

[UrbaNerd]

9 hrs avg. Weekdays usually get me 7-9 hrs, while weekends/days off get me anywhere from 9-12 hrs, thus resulting in the 9 hr average. I can function on a decent level from 7-8 hrs of sleep, with optimal function at 9+. Insomnia is a rare event, and I usually manage my time well; I don't pull all nighters to study (at least not yet). I struggle to stay awake at 6 hrs, and am a zombie at 5 hrs. Naps taken as needed, and they last from 1-3 hrs on average. Lately though, I have not needed any naps, even though I am pulling 11 hrs straight in classes some days.

Furthermore, in regards to sleep quality (The poster should edit the main portion of the post to ask this as well), I tend to sleep well through the night, and I often fall asleep within 10 mins of going to bed. When my mind is active, however, it may take well over an hour. I find that thinking monotonous, nonsensical thoughts and such easily allows one to fall asleep if the mind is racing. I wake up very rarely during sleep, mostly for when nature calls, nightmares, extremely loud noises, etc. I do not respond to minor and intermediate interference during sleep, although external stimuli may affect content going on in dreams.

Yeah, sorry for turning this thread into a sleep study.

[OkieEric]

i'm a 7-8 hr person, otherwise afternoons are sluggish.

just found this

I remember when that study came out - here's some more detail (I assume the same study)

What's amazing is that people that average 5 hours were less likely to die than those sleeping 8. 7 is apparently perfect

[Mr. Chenevert]

I'm also a 7-8 hour sleeper.

[sheeats]

I usually get about 7 hours, but I find that I always feel better the next day if I get 5 to 6. Yeah, I function better with less sleep. Anything over 8 hours, and I'm bloody ruined for the next day; can barely function, like a zombie.

[lockmat]

I need at least 7 hours. I prefer 8-8.5

And even when I get enough it's not so much the amount I got but the point of waking up to getting out of bed is the hard part.

[sevfiv]

I probably get around 7 hours a night, but it isn't good quality/uninterrupted all of the time (noisy upstairs neighbor )

Here's a commentary from the Mayo Clinic:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/how-many-...-enough/AN01487

[memebag]

I get about 5 or 6 hours most nights. There will be time for sleep when I'm dead.

[Subdude]

Probably 7-8 most nights, although less and less do I sleep through the night without waking so I would say sleep quality has gone down. Last year I went through a couple of weeks where for some reason I was sleeping enormous amounts, like 10-11 hours a night. It wasn't like I was sick; I felt fine but just wanted to sleep.

Do a lot of people have seasonal differences? I think I tend to sleep a bit more in the winter.

[Vertigo58]

I couldnt help but think of this topic as I tried and tried to pull myself out of bed this morning. I normally sleep very well after doing or having a real workout on the yard or house ie; mowing lawn, lifting heavy stuff and especially after running up and down the blasted stairs.

I also know I slept good if I remember my dreams or nightmares in great detail.

[KimberlySayWhat]

I oversleep or wake up really tired if I dream a lot during the night or if I dream in the mornings right before I wake up.

I hate dreaming. They're either too good to be true or something disturbing.

[20thStDad]

Dreaming is awesome, I always have adventurous dreams. The best sleep is dream sleep, I wake up feeling great afterward.

[Montrose1100]

I've been to a few sleep experts, and I've heard that people sleep in (anywhere from) 3-6 hour increments...

4-7 on weekdays, +12 on weekends.

[KimberlySayWhat]

Does anyone besides me ever have dreams where it's really nothing extraordinary or worth mentioning. It could be something as simple as eating strawberries poolside on a beautiful day. Sounds pleasant. But there's something about that just doesn't feel good? Like when you wake up you're slightly bothered by it?

[crunchtastic]

I tried keeping a dream diary becasue I have so many odd ones and always remember them, but it took too much time to write them down. I love dreaming. Except the occasional anxiety/chase dream. I have them where it feels like a chase sequence from an action movie. What I hate is that the sex dreams are always about some weird, unattractive random person, like the smarmiest guy in the office. Blech.

Speaking of sleep, my bedtime's coming up. Have a 7:30 am meeting, UGH. Need my 7-8 hours.

[Talbot]

I would like to get 8 hours of sleep, but I always have so much to do that I usually get about 5 hours on the weekdays and on the weekends is when I catch up on my sleep and sleep sometimes for 12 hours straight.

Although lately I have been waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes it could be as little as one time and other times I may wake up almost every hour. Either way it's annoying. >=(

[memebag]

I love my dreams. Most of them are set in shopping malls. I once dreamed that Fidel Castro took me to the basement of the Galleria, where he was excavating an ancient Egyptian tomb. We discovered a 5,000 year old cigar and smoked it right there. It tasted like cheese.

When I was a kid, most of my dreams included the ability to fly. There were several different categories of them. In some, I flew like Superman. In others, I flew by moving my legs like I was riding a bike, and was always a bit unstable. There were a whole bunch of them set in a world with a flying sickness. It felt like having a slight cold, but it imparted the ability to float around like a balloon. I had these dreams many times, and eventually my dream mind began to recognize the onset of the disease and think "Oh yeah, I've got that flying sickness again. Time to fly around!" Several of those were set in the old Sears store in Pasadena.

Even the most disturbing dreams leave me with a pleasant sensation the next day. Here's an example from one of my attempts at keeping a dream journal:

I dreamed I saw a man walking the streets of London, tearing apart a small plastic sculpture and strewing the pieces on the ground. He was video taping the process. When the sculpture was entirely gone he was at the door of a building. He walked in and it looked sort of like a pool hall. Each pool table was a piece of art. The first was very large and had big round holes in the top. Some of the holes had paint cans inside them, some didn't. Pygmies were standing on that table and rolling bowling balls into the holes. Another had staggered levels on the top, sort of like giant shards of broken glass covered in green felt. Each pool table was an inventive and novel form of art work, and they filled the void left by the tiny sculpture the man had destroyed. There were dozens of them, arranged much like a standard pool hall. They became progressively more and more disturbing, leading up to the last two at the back of the room. One of them had a man staked down spread eagle on top, being tortured by fetishists. They were slowly vivisecting him. Most of his skin was peeled back and there was blood all over the pool table. The last had the top half of a man stretched across it and two tattooed cannibals were casually eating him from the feet up.

[KimberlySayWhat]

Those sound very weird, memebag.

Well, I had a doozy of one last night, or this morning. I woke up a little later than usual.

I was at home and my mom was there. I had to use the bathroom, but the toilet was in the garage. So I'm sitting there and my mom busts in there and I yell that I'm using the bathroom! She tells me to come inside because some strange people are coming up the driveway. By the time I get inside, she's inviting these people in. Apparently she knows them. Some of them have dogs on leashes. I've never seen these people before so I go into my bedroom, which looked nothing like my bedroom. I find that my sister has used one of my walls to hang her clothes on. I don't want them in there because I like things to be kept neat. So I start taking them down and I notice that she had them labeled for some reason. I kind of feel bad that I mixed them up, but not too bad. So while I'm doing this some teenage girl, from the group of people that my mom invited in, comes in there and we start talking about clothes. Then I take my sister's heap of clothes into her room, but there's nowhere to hang them. So I go into another room and it's like a big dining room of a hotel. There are large windows and even a view of downtown. It's supposed to be Houston, but it doesn't look like it. It's much shorter than Houston's skyline. There are people in there haiving a party and they're mingling around. I'm like, "what?!". So I decide to take my sister's clothes into her bathroom and hang them in there instead. Her bathroom is like a large public restroom, but it's really clean, so I don't mind being in there. My brother-in-law comes walking down a hall, laughing, and tells me that I'm in the men's restroom. It was empty, so I sort of laugh it off too. End of that part.

Second part, I'm somewhere. A large department store or something. There's a man arond 60+ years old with a double stroller. There's two little boys around 5 years old sitting in the stroller. One kid is white, the other is black. The little black kid starts talking about when he gets home he's going to cook some french fries in the microwave and just sort of gabs on as I smile and listen amusingly. The man does not even acknowledge me. Finally the man looks up, he has a wrinkles and pitted face, he smiles and starts talking about corn. The end.

I'm running through a park. It feels fallish outside. There's a stream (or maybe a ditch) with rolling banks and a little bridge. There are park benches. There are people everywhere. There's also a woman dressed as Mrs. Santa Claus. But she's younger and more stylish than a typical Mrs. Clause. I'm running through this park so hard I feel like I'm going to collapse, but I'm laughing hyterically the whole time. The end.

I left a few details out, because they were too hard to explain and I can't remember them clearly.

[memebag]

What I hate is that the sex dreams are always about some weird, unattractive random person, like the smarmiest guy in the office. Blech.

Hmmm. I ... hmmm.

[crunchtastic]

Hmmm. I ... hmmm.

Why hmmmm? Just once, why can't it be someone super-hot and unattainable? No such luck, my subconscious seems to prefer getting nasty with the CPA from Skokie who wears bad socks and insists on being called by his nickname.

I would love to have a flying dream. That would be cool.

[memebag]

Why hmmmm?

Well ... uh ... just "hmmm".

Just once, why can't it be someone super-hot and unattainable? No such luck, my subconscious seems to prefer getting nasty with the CPA from Skokie who wears bad socks and insists on being called by his nickname.

Hey, this isn't all about you. I bet that CPA never gets any dream stank on his hang-low. Think about it from his perspective.

I would love to have a flying dream. That would be cool.

I wish I had more of them as an adult. I may just not remember them now. I've read that we dream every night but forget most of them. I've also read speculation that remembering them can be harmful. There's a theory that dreams are a by-product of the brain breaking neural connections it no longer needs, and remembering a dream may reconnect them.

[20thStDad]

I had one flying dream when I was about 17, but it wasn't as fun as you would think. The ball had gotten stuck on the roof, and I flapped my arms really hard and slowly flew up to get it. After I did it I didn't want to do it again because it was so much work. I have lots of travelling-fast-on-the-ground dreams though, some where I just scoot on my knees down the freeway at insane speeds. And tornadoes. With secret underground passages.

[IronTiger]

Shouldn't this be in the regular Off-Topic section? As far as the regulations are concerned: this ain't Sex, Politics, or Morals.

[TheNiche]

I love my dreams. Most of them are set in shopping malls. I once dreamed that Fidel Castro took me to the basement of the Galleria, where he was excavating an ancient Egyptian tomb. We discovered a 5,000 year old cigar and smoked it right there. It tasted like cheese.

When I was a kid, most of my dreams included the ability to fly. There were several different categories of them. In some, I flew like Superman. In others, I flew by moving my legs like I was riding a bike, and was always a bit unstable. There were a whole bunch of them set in a world with a flying sickness. It felt like having a slight cold, but it imparted the ability to float around like a balloon. I had these dreams many times, and eventually my dream mind began to recognize the onset of the disease and think "Oh yeah, I've got that flying sickness again. Time to fly around!" Several of those were set in the old Sears store in Pasadena.

Even the most disturbing dreams leave me with a pleasant sensation the next day. Here's an example from one of my attempts at keeping a dream journal:

Funny, when I a kid, I once had a dream about having gotten trapped inside my locked-up middle school after hours, and a gang of armed Communists broke in. I don't know how I knew that they were Communists--I just knew. I somehow found myself in the kitchen area of the cafeteria, pulled some frozen links of sausage out of the deep freeze, and spent the entire night stalking and beating up Commies with frozen sausage.

I can recall several flying dreams, but they either were more like a low-gravity moonwalk situation or required that I just flap my arms really really hard.

[houstonmacbro]

Hey, can anyone find/share information on how much sleep people should get, depending on their age? Thanks.

6-7 hours